“That’s where the joker comes in.
The French know there’s a sort of diplomatic
credo at the London Foreign Office to the general
effect that England and France have got to stand together
or Europe will go to pieces. The French are
realists. They bank on that. They tread
on British corns, out here, all they want to, while
they toss bouquets, backed by airplanes, across the
English Channel.”

“Then the war didn’t end the old diplomacy?”

“What a question! But I haven’t
more than scratched the Near East surface for you
yet. There’s Mustapha Kemal in Anatolia,
leader of the Turkish Nationalists, no more dead or
incapacitated than a possum. He’s playing
for his own hand—­Kaiser Willy stuff—­studying
Trotzky and Lenin, and flirting with Feisul’s
party on the side. Then there’s a Bolshevist
element among the Zionists—­got teeth, too.
There’s an effort being made from India to
intrigue among the Sikh troops employed in Palestine.
There’s a very strong party yelling for an American
mandate. The Armenians, poor devils, are pulling
any string they can get hold of, in the hope that
anything at all may happen. The orthodox Jews
are against the Zionists; the Arabs are against them
both, and furious with one another. There’s
a pan-Islam movement on foot, and a pan-Turanian—­both
different, and opposed. About 75 per cent of
the British are as pro-Arab as they dare be, but the
rest are strong for the Zionists. And the Administrator’s
neutral!—­strong for law and order but taking
no sides.”

“And you?”

“I’m one of the men who is trying to keep
the peace.”

He invited me to stay to dinner. The other members
of the mess were trooping in, all his juniors, all
obviously fond of him and boisterously irreverent
of his rank. Dinner under his chairmanship was
a sort of school for repartee. It was utterly
unlike the usual British mess dinner. If you
shut your eyes for a minute you couldn’t believe
that any one present had ever worn a uniform.
I learned afterward that there was quite a little
competition to get into that mess.

After dinner most of them trooped out again, to dance
with Zionist ladies at an institute affair.
But he and I stayed, and talked until midnight.
Before I left, the key of Palestine and Syria was
in my hands.

“You seem interested,” he said, coming
with me to the door. “If you don’t
mind rough spots now and then, I’ll try to show
you a few things at first hand.”

Chapter Two

“No objection; only a stipulation.”

The showmanship began much sooner than I hoped.
The following day was Sunday, and I had an invitation
to a sort of semi-public tea given by the American
Colony after their afternoon religious service.